Jaded
by Verboten Byacolate
Summary: I hate you. And while we're on that subject, I want to know why I can't stop loving you. [SasuSaku]


A/N; T.T I have so many projects going right now, it's a wonder I was able to finish this one. Enjoy the SasuSaku dramangst!

Oh, and btw, the different prints these are put in are people talking. Hopefully, you'll figure out who's who.

**Jaded**

_I don't need you to save me!_

It was a lie, and they both knew it, but her pride and her dignity placed the words in her mouth and pushed them out. Bottle green eyes flashed dangerously, and a frustrated hand batted away stray rosette strands of hair. She knew his reaction before it came; the smirk, the arrogant tilt to his body, and those damned words.

_I am not weak!_ she screamed furiously back, slapping his horrible, no longer smirking face. His right hand snatched hers from the air, and his left hovered above his red cheek. She wanted him to be angry. She wanted him to wrench her wrist and cause her pain. She wanted his cold black eyes to turn a bloody red, for him to try to attack her. She wanted him to do something that would give her the right to hit him again.

She hated how he never did what she wanted.

He held her wrist in his grip as he tugged her closer to him, his lips close to her ear.

**You are wrong on both counts.**

She shrieked and tried to pull away, but he payed no mind to her thrashing. Instead, he tangled her arms in his, and locked his legs around hers. He placed his forehead on her own, and glued her angry jade eyes on his amused obsidian ones. His lips formed words she never expected to hear from him, and her eyebrows furrowed.

_What do you care, bastard?_

**I don't.**

In a frustrated motion, she shoved him away, tripping over his legs, and her own as well. He let her wrist slip through his fingers until they only brushed, feather-light, on her soft, pale flesh. She shivered at the feeling.

And then, she ran.

- x - X - :_**I hear you everywhere**:_ - X - x -

_Tears aren't really blue._

She left the child to ponder her words, exiting the doors to the girl's room, striding briskly down the hallway. The walls were painted a bland light blue. It was the same blue everywhere on this floor. Obviously, the painters had gotten lazy after the multicolored bottom floors, which interfered with peoples' thinking. They would think, 'this hospital is so colorful, so cheerful. Everything will be okay.'

They were all fools, because much of the time, everything would _not_ be "okay". Children would die. Many would never get to say goodbye to their loved ones. Brave men and women passed through the doors, their blood and other's caking their body. They came in battered bloody and bruised, but alive. They did not always exit the same way.

Life was taboo, especially for her kind. Shinobi were masters of dodging Fate and cheating death, but you could only dodge and cheat so many times before you were finally caught. The hospital walls were adorned with such people, thus proving her morbid revelations. She ignored the stray strands of rosette hair escaping from the loose bun she'd strung them up in earlier.

Sakura-san!

She entered the room for the second time that day, and looked expectantly at the small girl. In the child's hands was the picture she'd drawn, but the little girl had changed the previous cartoon woman's hair from a deep pencil black to a soft pastel pink.

What did you mean... tears aren't blue?

_Tears are merely for show_, she explained. _They have no color at all._

And then she heard it... his voice, repeating the phrase over again. Her eyes widened, and her legs wobbled, and she felt the blood drain from her face.

Really? No color?

In a small voice, she replied.

_None._

- x - X - :_**Don't speak**:_ - X - x -

She felt a bead of sweat roll down her cheek as she instructed the woman under her hands to breathe. Said woman closed her eyes tightly in pain, complying to her words to make the hurt stop.

_Just breathe, Hinata-san. In, out. It will be over soon._

She was no longer of use for any words of real comfort (though her last comment was probably the most comforting thing she could say to a woman in labor). Soothing words no longer flew out of her mouth as they had years ago. She could not heal with words, and to many, they were useless anyway. Healing jutsus and medicine were her prescriptions, nothing more, nothing less. Anymore she didn't feel the need for such petty things, even when one of her best friends were at her mercy.

She never bothered with comforting; she was there to get the job done.

_In, out._

She sent her helper nurses in a furious scramble of preparation; the birth of the Hokage's child was indeed a special occasion.

_In, out. _

She instructed the two women by the door to let the thundering father in. The door wasn't even halway open before he burst into the room, a blur of prange and yellow, immediately attaching himself to his agonizing wife. Her nails dug into his hands and she bit her lip in pain. He murmured words to her; the

words of comfort that she could never give

The sight gave her the most bittersweet feeling

_In, out._

Finally, all was done. She ignored the fussing nurses at her elbows and stared at the wriggling newborn in her arms. As the baby girl was whisked away by the clucking women, she blinked, and went to wash her hands. Walking back to the panting mother and frantic father, she plucked the babe out of her coworkers' hands and took the mother's hand in her own.

_A healthy, beautiful girl._

After a few moments of joyous shouts and cheers from her whiskered friend, she was able to hush him, and stepped out of the room to give the new parents their privacy. She closed the door, her hand resting on the knob.

What were those two thinking?? Bringing a poor, innocent little girl into such a huge, frightening, evil world? Didn't they once stop to think how much pain the child would suffer? Were they so blinded by selfishness that they decided to ignore the obvious- that no child deserved to live through such cruelty??

She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. Mere seconds later, she brushed three tears and four strands of stray rosette hair from her face. Holding her fingers before her eyes, she smiled sadly as his words repeated themselves to her in her head.

_It's true. No color at all._

- x - X - :_**Anymore**:_ - X - x -

Her heart beat wildly in her chest and she clutched her pillow do her as she peeked out the doorway. The hallway was dark and silent and supposedly empty. She was too alert for so late at night, and she was grateful that she had the moon to guard her back. Plucking three kunai from the small table beside her door, she set a foot outside her bedroom.

The moonlight behind her vanished.

She turned swiftly and slashed into thin air. Pivoting on her heel, she swung her weapon-clad fist into the direction of the room's second heartbeat, again to hit nothing but air. A snarl escaped her parted lips and she took a running leap from her window. Landing on the ground below, her nightgown billowing around her slim waist, she turned immediately and struck a defensive stance.

_**Jaded.**_

His voice carried on the wind and she cried out in anger. She dug her fist into the ground, shaking the earth around her, running deep cracks through the hard soil. On her knees, she punched downward again and again, consumed by her anger and frustration.

_Leave me!_

Again, she struck at the ground.

_**Jaded.**_

Her repetitive earth-pummeling not only cracked the soil beneath her, but her fists too. They began to bleed, and the wounds opened more and more with each punch. Tears streaked down her pale face and she screamed at him. Wild-eyed, she lept at his dark form, tearing at his clothes, gnashing her teeth, and he brushed it all aside with a swipe of his hand. She kunai fell from hers, and her face darkened.

_You hit me_

**You needed it.**

Her hand rose into the air soundlessly, her eyes narrowed. The slap resounded throughout the empty air around them.

_I am not weak!_ she screamed furiously. His right hand snatched hers from the air, and his left hovered above his red cheek. She wanted him to be angry. She wanted him to wrench her wrist and cause her pain. She wanted his cold black eyes to turn a bloody red, for him to try to attack her. She wanted him to do something that would give her the right to hit him again.

He never did what she wanted.

**You're jaded, Sakura.**

//His hovering hand flitted to her trembling chin, his thumb barely tracing the outline of her lips. His eyes bore down on hers, inviting her into their icy depths that held only the slightest ounce of warmth, just for her. The hand he'd used to grip her wrist lifted to her ruffled forehead and tucked a stray strand of rosette hair behind her ear.

**Don't be**//

... He always seemed to do just a little more.

_bestillmy_**Fin**_beatingheart_

**Written while I was listening to _Hinata vs Neji_. The song is from the Naruto Original Soundtrack 2. I got it from narutofan**dot**com. It definitely got the mood right. Also, while writing this, I kept envisioning both Sasuke and Sakura as they are drawn by Samurai-Pet on deviantart. Don't ask me why; I have no idea. Ooh! And I ate strawberry ice cream during most of the writing. Because strawberry ice cream is the snack food of the jaded XD**

**Disclaimer; I don't own Naruto.**

**Alternate title; _Stray Rosette Strands_, if you didn't notice the reoccurrance of that particular phrase. But I thought _Jaded_ would get the point across better X3 I'm a nut.**


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